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Barcelona

One of my favourite things about Spain is that I can always get around, because I can read the signs (having lived in the Canary Islands, I can speak some Spanish). Tho' on my trip to Barcelona, that wasn't always true because, of course, they speak Catalan. That said, I managed to get all my connections from the airport to the city without problem. I just couldn't work out where my hostel was from the metro station.

I arrived at around 2pm, so had the afternoon to myself anyway, and after walking around in circles for a good 45 minutes, finally checked into my hostel, and decided to go for a walk to the beach. Of course, I took the wrong turn and ended up near Poble Sec before turning around to the beach. It was the tail end of November, so it was of course quiet and most of the restaurants were closed for the season. It still looked so beautiful.

Beautiful evening sunset

I struck lucky, going out of season to Barcelona. Secretly, I love watching football; often I don't get the chance to watch the EPL any more since I work over the weekends, but going to Barcelona meant I had to check for tickets to see the greatest football team in the world play. Lucky I was! It was less than 20€ for a seat 8 rows back from the pitch! Worth every penny. It was the second round of the Copa del Rey and everything I had read about the match meant that Barcelona should have walked it, and won easily. But the team they played, Deportivo Alaves, scored within the first fifteen minutes! The match ended 3-1 to Barcelona.

Don't I look pleased with myself?

Granted, it's a horrible picture of me looking windswept in that HUGE stadium, but I was so pleased with myself!

The hostel I stayed in, HelloBCN in Paral.lel, organised to take us to the pub (pub crawls are illegal in Barcelona and many hostels get fined for selling them) each night at midnight, so I was back just in time for that night's offering. Whoever is on reception takes us somewhere, it's more of a, "I'm going here and you're all welcome to join me", affair. It was great, too, because in November the hostel was quiet and there were about 30 of us on these outings each night. That night we went to the Absinthe bar.

So apparently, to make it taste better, you dip your sugar cubes in the absinthe and set fire to them, as above. It was easily the most disgusting thing I have ever drunk. However, it set the theme for the night, and the alcohol definitely kicked in, because the rest of the night looked like this:

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